Skywatcher Telescopes

Reviews

Really cool kit to enhace the real power of any mid-range telescope. Good quality lenses. Superb filters!...What else must I write?...Uhmmm...what are u waiting for?!!! you won't regret this purchase.

The kit is overpriced. The 4mm eyepiece that comes with it is completely unusable. The eye relief (the space between your eye and the eyepiece) requires you to push your eyeball into the lens. As a matter of fact, nearly all of the eyepieces have horrible eye relief. The one I use most from the kit is the 9mm lens. You have to be pretty close to the opening in order to see anything. All of the eyepieces feel cheap. It seems like they're made in China - completely out of plastic. A few times, pulling the protective cover off of the 9mm, I felt as if I was going to break it. The barlow suffers from the same problem. It's cheap. But at least it's decent. Optically, it's alright. I could see paying $20 for one. The case everything comes in is actually really nice. It's well built, kind of tough, and has ample space in it. You could easily add a few more eyepieces. Of everything that came with the kit, I plan on holding on to the case for sure. I'm not sure of why or what I should use the filters for. After some reading of the instructions, I discovered I should use the lunar filter (it's blue) to take a picture of the moon with my cell phone. It cut down on the brightness but gave the moon a slight blue tinge. The picture I took looks like it's in grey scale. Before, the moon was way too bright to snap a picture of, so I guess that's one reason to use a filter. I tried out a few more and I don't think I liked them. I'm sure some people know how to use them, but I don't see myself getting much milage out of them for the time being. If I could do it over again, I'd probably only buy two or three really nice eye pieces. My 6se came with a 25mm. So then I'd get a 10mm X-Cel eyepiece (with more eye relief), a barlow lens, and maybe a wide field eyepiece from Celestron's Ultima LX series. An X-Cel 10mm lens costs $50, a better quality barlow will set you back $35. Already, you'd have a nice set of magnifications with real quality eyepieces that's 40-50 dollars less than the kit. You'll get tons more use out of just those two eyepieces (plus the lens included with your scope) than you will with the kit. I guarantee it. If you wanted to splurge, you could get a wide view eyepiece for $120. After viewing a few messier objects, I'm going to want one. In conclusion, skip the kit. Figure out which eyepiece you'll want by taking the focal length of your scope and dividing it by the eyepiece. For instance, my scope is a Celestron 6se. It's focal length is 1500mm. So, we find that with the included eyepiece, it has a magnification of 60x. With a 10mm eyepiece, you'll get 150x. With the barlow, you can get 120x and 300x (probably pushing it). You now have a good range of magnifications to see just about anything in the night's sky. If you choose to spend a little more and get a wide field lens as well, you'll be loving life.

I'm fairly new to astronomy, but I expected better quality when I purchased this eyepiece kit from Celestron. After reading some of the reviews here, I was convinced that these were going to be some decent eyepieces and filters. This kit may be alright for some, but I found them lacking in quality of fit and build and would not recommend them to anyone who has the desire to use the high-power eyepieces (9x, 6x, 4x, etc). I bought these because of the low price tag, and for the most part, I regret not just buying one or two better quality eyepieces from Televue. The filters were really "cheap" too.

Since I am a beginner I occasionally use this. But, I keep thinking of purchasing eyepieces of higher grades in the future. Optical qualites are fairly limited. The extreme small ones are too dark to use. It might be better to purchase 15mm and Barlow(sp?) lens seperately.

You just can't beat the price! Wait they just did! I paid a little over 120 and they just dropped it 5. Great case. Eyepieces all work great and you get the filters also. Has extra room for your other eyepieces. I highly recommend this for all beginners like me,

Reviews

I purchased this for my Nexstar 6se based on the price and Celestron name. For general viewing this is a good zoom eye piece for the price. I used it to zoom into the moon and Saturn and both worked fairly well. One thing I noticed with this unit is that when you zoom you had to adjust your alignment on the object you were viewing and sometimes I had to refocus. I didn't mind those as the adjustment was not very much. The one thing I didn't like was the zoom control. I found it annoying at times to do the actual zoom with the way the zoom is setup. The zoom wasn't smooth and I often had to grab the eye piece with two hands with one hand to hold the eye piece and the other to turn the zoom. For me that was annoying so in the end I returned the eye piece and plan to instead look for a more refined piece rather then going for the cheaper Celestron.

Un buen lente, para iniciar, te ayudara a aprender a encontrar objetos sin dificultades, aunque no tiene la mejor claridad lo recomiendo ampliamente para explorar el espacio.

I bought one and it is fitting good for my Celestron 130 Astromaster. A little refocusing if move zoom in-out extremely. Image is sharp and clear, very confortable, large field of view. Personal, I like it. By the way, I saw the moons of Jupiter this year through zoom eyepiece ! I can saw also two colour bands of Jupiter, in town light polution. Jupiter scale like a pea.

I bought this for my modest Meade 90mm refractor, and it works very well. I find it to be about as clear as the medicore stock Meade eyepieces I own. It will not be as good as premium eyepieces though. For the price, I think this zoom eyepiece was a good buy. It takes the place of several separate eyepieces. If you using a higher end telescope, you may want to look at a higher end zoom eyepiece such as the Baader Hyperion.

Tried it on my first telescope - Celestron 80ED Spotter. Good and convenient. No need to change multiple eye pieces. Good buy.

Reviews

This collimator is pretty fair, but I later ordered the laser collimator, and discovered that my main mirror was a little bit off. If you're on a tight budget, like I was, this will do a good enough job. Otherwise, get the laser! :)

I'm still new at collimation. I use this to get the secondary mirror aligned and then use a laser collimator for the final adjustments. They seem to work well together. My laser collimator has a self-centering adapter to remove focuser slop. I wish this did also so I could be sure that they were "seeing" the same thing.

It works fine. Takes a little getting used to it, but works like a charm.

This is a great item for the "regular guy" in astronomy. Sure there are more expensive options (laser) but if you're collimating your dobsonian with a friend there is no easier/cheaper way than this tool. I've lined up my 8 inch dob with this tool multiple times and it never fails. Love this piece. Makes up an essential part of my dobsonian toolkit.

This thing works. Right out of the box I was able to line up my mirrors in less that an hour to textbook perfect diffraction rings on a star. It is the first real collimation my scope has had since I got it. I bought a cheap Dobsonian over twenty years ago. Didn't use it much, had a couple of cheap eyepieces. It made pretty good images compared to other scopes but I was never sure of the collimation. Fast forward to today when the internet allows people to communicate with each other! Read the reviews on collimators and the articles on collimation. This device is a consistent favorite. Cheap and effective, it goes right to the front of my new and improved eyepiece collection.

Reviews

The telescope is very hard to work for children under 13. I was hoping to be able to set it up for my nephew, but it was hard for several grown people to try to focus the thing. My nephew said that the moon looked bigger if he just stared at it instead of looking inside of this thing. You know what they say, children always say the truth.

I purchased this knowing I wanted a bottom of the line disposable product and I was not dissappointed. It is OK for the price as long as you immediately pitch the tripod into the nearest handy active valcano. You are much better off using your hands and a nearby tree or other support. Everything else works just fine for watching wildlife, but I would not expect it to do well for stargazing.

a pair of binoculars works better than this telescope. It's really hard to find the target and does not bring clearer picture than binoculars. My 7 old son played with it two hours and has not touched for a few weeks. We'll see it can be used for birds watching.

I purchased one at Walgreen's for $12.75 on close out merely as a demonstration for others of what not to buy. Sure, it is much better than what Galileo made, himself, 400 years ago, but: 1) The product is advertised on the box by the magnification it yields. The manufacturer is betting that you do not know that "quality" is based on light gathering ability (the diameter of the front lens, for a refractor telescope, or the diameter of the rear mirror, in a Newtonian reflector) and NOT by the magnifications printed on the box. 2) The mount is totally flimsy. The constant wobbling prevents clear viewing. A good mount should be able to dampen the vibrations after focusing, for example, in about 2 seconds. This one took about 15 seconds or more. And never stopped even with a light breeze. A solid camera tripod would improve the setup 10-fold. 3) The lowest power eyepiece (12mm/50x) exceeds the performance ability of the telescope for nighttime viewing. A general rule is that the maximum useful magnification = 25 x the diameter (in inches) of the lens (or mirror). The 2" lens x 25 = 50. 4) The eyepieces are poor. Only the very center of them appears to come to focus, with the rest of the image being blurry. And that's with daytime viewing. I can only imaging the collimation flaws in the optics when looking at stars. 5) The eyepieces are inferior, obsolete 0.965" barrel diameter. Today's eyepieces are a universal 1.25" (and 2" diameter for highest quality ones). 6) The box shows color images of the Orion nebula and the Pleiades. Color can only be achieved through time-exposure photography with the telescope on an equatorial mount. With VERY few exceptions (such as a 12" Newtonian reflector), color will NEVER be visible through an eyepiece on any telescope. When color is perceived, it is only when viewing the brightest emission nebula, and then the effect is a slight green color effect. If you are interested in a telescope, check out your local astronomy club for advice. Avoid any refractor less than 3" or any reflector less than 6 inches.

I bought this for $20 at our local drugstore to use with my son. Once I got home and started to use it, though, I found the image was completely blurry and I couldn't see anything clearly... although I noticed objects directly in front of the lens were sharply in focus. After noticing about half of the reviews all across the Internet for this telescope were positive and half were negative, it occurred to me to check the objective lens (the big one at the end of the tube). Sure enough, once I unscrewed the piece that housed the lens and flipped it around, the telescope began functioning properly. I secured the housing back in place with some electrical tape. I think this solution should solve the problem for buyers experiencing the blurriness issue. Cheap materials (and apparently careless production) limit this telescope to young children or very casual astronomers. The eyepieces that come with the set are not terribly powerful (the moon will appear about the size of a dime) and I will try to locate some inexpensive upgrades. Luckily, the telescope has a screw attachment that will connect with a standard camera tripod, because the tripod that comes with the set is flimsy and not terribly useful for fine movements. In summary, I would recommend this telescope, with the caveat that you may need to do some fiddling to get it working properly and the magnification is not very powerful. However, the cheap price makes all of that palatable.

Reviews

How much better can the glass get or the coatings used be, to justify well over a thousand dollars or more for the same aperature. This scope produces excellent quality views, is easy to focus and comfortable to use.

I bought this Pentax after extensive research online, to find a scope which would show me 6mm holes in a 500 yard target. There are very few out there which do this, and I could not afford several $thousands for the Swarovski/Leica models. So the Pentax was the only option for me, affordable and MIGHT do the job. I took a punt. Well, happy to say it does the job brilliantly. At 500 yards the image is crystal clear, no chroma, bright and sharp. I can see not only 6mm bullet holes, but the tiny blowback marks around each hole plus scratches on the plate. It's simply magnificent. At the target range, I had it sitting on a small Velbon tripod next to my rifle. The Pentax has the ability to roll the body through left to right on the tripod, so it was easy to position with a sideways tilt to enable me to look through the nicely-angled eyepiece at the target, then transfer my eye to the riflescope and shoot, and then back to the Pentax to see how I did, all without changing the position of my body. The same can be done when lying prone in the field. It's really easy when self-spotting, but also helpful if you are spotting for a mate and you need to zoom out quickly to locate the target, and then zoom in to watch the projectile. Under good conditions you will see the shockwave of the bullet as it travels. However, I do need to add a rider. To get this kind of quality at that distance, you need an equal quality eyepiece to go with it. The 20-60x zoom that came with the package is out of this world and in my mind superior to that offered by either the Leica or Swarovski eyepieces. Put together, the image is breathtaking. I'd also add that this is under near-perfect optical conditions. No wind, no mirage, and a stable and solid tripod. When mirage starts to boil up, then the image becomes blurred and much less useful. However, no scope will give you a clear image under those conditions, so I don't repine. Apart from the optical quality it's also an excellent field scope in that the lens is filled with anti-fogging gas and it's very sturdy construction, as you would expect. It's light enough to cart around on top of a moderately heavy tripod for a kilometre or two over hilly terrain. And I'm smallish and not very strong, so a big person wouldn't have any trouble. All in all, a brilliant buy and one I would recommend to anyone who wants a high-end scope of apochromatic quality and performance but without the scary price tag. Note: I didn't buy this for birdwatching, but for target shooting and long-distance small vermin spotting. I can't evaluate it as a birding scope, but if you can see a baby rabbit at 700 yards clearly enough to show its fur markings, I'm guessing you can identify at least some birds with it.

I've owned this Pentax PF80ED for four years now and I've found it to be a relative bargain in the world of high end spotting scopes. In fact I like it more and more all the time. It's a matter of personal preference, but I have always preferred fixed power eyepieces over zooms. Fixed eyepieces are almost always better optically than zooms, though of course you are stuck with only one magnification unless you choose to swap lenses in the field. For some time, I was happy using the fixed XW14 eyepiece which offers 37x with the angled version of this scope. Eventually I decided I'd like the option of a brighter image and wider field and I recently started using the XW20 eyepiece which offers 26x. I've found that for most birding applications, 26x is more than adequate. It is an excellent eyepiece- wide, very sharp and bright- and will show you all the detail you need 90% of the time. Atmospheric distortion and vibration are also minimized at this magnification. Certianly there are times you might want more magnification and the XW14 eyepiece will fit the bill (and of course you can always opt for the zoom eyepiece). Eye relief of these XW eyepieces is very good- about 20mm, which is more than adequate for those who wear eyeglasses as I do. I also like the position of the offset (as opposed to right in the middle) focus wheel on this scope which is easy to reach- even though I am a lefty- and very smooth in operation. The scope and eyepieces are obviously very well made. Weight is the only negative. Together, the scope, eyepiece and tripod are on the heavy side, but equal to or not much more than other comparable high end scopes. A very decent nylon case is included which can be left on while the scope is in use. This is a very nice sotting scope with a wide array of eyepiece options. Optical quality is excellent and at a very reasonable price (comparatively anyway). I wouldn't hesitate to make this purchase again.

I like the product, but i find it a little expencive

Reviews

Great price and outstanding performance of these eyepieces. I shopped around alot and this price was outstanding. Shipping was very fast and packaging was great. I will use this vendor again.

Set features great eyepieces that have good field of view. Lower power lenses reveal great details of the moon and are ideal for 'calibrating' your spotting scope. Set's increments are very useful for stepping up magnifications of Saturn, other planets or the moon. Very easy to go 40mm to 32mm to 15mm to 12.4mm to 9.7mm to 6.4mm with focus and center technique greatly alleviating frustration and taking minimal time. Definitely recommend the set based on the increments alone, quality is above average for a set in this price range. I guess the only hit I have is eyepieces could be identified more readily. Font on eyepieces is small and hard to see in the dark.

My husband gave me a really nice telescope for Christmas. I wanted some better lenses to view planets so I searched around online. I found this set on the manufacturer's website and found it to be a few dollars cheaper here on Amazon. I'm very pleased with this set. The lenses are nice and heavy, the case is terrific and keeps each lens sealed tightly so that they can't move around. Great variety of lenses, heavy and much better quality than the ones that came with my Meade telescope.